The First Child / Before I Sleep
by James Lee
Summary: This story shadows End of Evangelion. This is the Third Impact as experienced by the First Child. Possible side story to
1. Prelude / Moon Over Damascus

The First Child / Before I Sleep  
(A Side Story to "The Second Child / Promises To Keep")  
  
----  
  
Part 1 - Prelude / Moon Over Damascus  
  
----  
  
"... Don't you dream? ..."  
  
She hears it in her sleep.  
  
A voice in the void. A small haunting presence flitting  
past the silent girl like a firefly in the night, but she  
notices it and follows it. She's recognized the voice of  
the old Asuka Langley... whispering to her like a ghost  
from the past...  
  
"... Just who exactly are you, Rei?"  
  
Rei Ayanami opens her eyes with a soft gasp, her knees  
freezing, heart racing silently, and she looks warily  
around the unfamiliar, dimly-lit room. As her eyes adjust  
to the gloomy grey light, she notes clothes and books and  
packing boxes strewn carelessly around on the floor, on  
the dresser, on the chair. It's the apartment, she  
realizes, starting to relax. Not her apartment. The other  
one.  
  
Her eyes, continuing to survey the room, come to a stop  
on the bed, where the Second Child lies on her back,  
bathing in the moonlight that covers her from her hair to  
her thighs. The redhead has her hands crossed behind her  
head, her long hair flowing over her pillow, her blue  
eyes, lost in thought, staring pensively at the ceiling.  
  
With a few small steps Rei walks over to Asuka, and sits  
down hesitantly on the bed, by the Second Child's bare  
feet. The First Child remains silent and expressionless  
for a few long seconds, and glancing over at the Second  
from the corner of her eyes, she finally replies, a flat  
whisper across the long, pregnant silence,  
  
"I... I don't know."  
  
"You're not telling me everything," grumbles the Second.  
"Why bother coming here then?"  
  
"Even if I did know, and I told you, you... you  
won't remember us meeting like this when you wake up  
from this dream... otherwise, you would have told me   
about it, right?"   
  
"See? See? Even in my stupid dream, there's something not  
right about you!"  
  
"... Please don't say that."  
  
"Why not? It's true."  
  
"Perhaps I don't want to know the truth."  
  
"Hmph. You're a coward then. Just like your friend  
Shinji."  
  
The First looks away. Into the shadows in the room.  
Clenches her shaking fist on the rumpled bedsheet.  
  
"And you?" is all she manages to say.  
  
The Second doesn't answer.  
  
"Aren't there things you yourself are afraid to find  
out?" Rei whispers.  
  
Silence.  
  
"Asuka?"  
  
Silence. Nothing.  
  
She turns around to face the Second, but gasps and jumps  
away suddenly in wide-eyed shock.  
  
They're not in Asuka's room anymore. The Second, wrapped  
now in a patient's gown, lies under the white sheets of a  
hospital bed. Her face gaunt and pale, lit only by the  
gray light of the old bulb on the ceiling. The Second's  
lips lie half open in a frozen frown, wide hollow eyes,  
their fire long quenched, staring vacantly up at the  
ceiling. Her shallow breathing, and the dull mechanical  
beeping of the life support systems, the only signs  
denying the fact of her death.  
  
A new chill runs down the First Child's spine.  
  
"Asuka? ... Wake up..."  
  
The door to the hospital room opens behind her with a  
slow creak. Echoing footsteps.  
  
"Asuka...?" she whispers plaintively.  
  
***  
  
A boy's whisper behind her.   
  
"You are Rei Ayanami, the First Child. We are alike, you  
and I..."  
  
The First Child turns around and finds herself looking up  
at scarlet-colored eyes.  
  
"Adam-child," she whispers, almost calmly. "Have you come  
to betray again?"  
  
She notes the static in the air as two AT fields nudge  
against each other.  
  
"I'm sorry, Lillith, but the appointed time has arrived,"  
he whispers calmly back to her.  
  
***  
  
A man's whisper behind her.  
  
"It is time for you to serve your purpose, Rei. Are you  
ready?"  
  
The First Child turns around and stares up at a familiar  
grim face, eyes hidden by spectacles.  
  
"Yes, Commander," she replies simply, automatically.  
Almost smiling.  
  
"Dr. Akagi has unfortunately gone."  
  
"You've... killed her?"   
  
"Rei... it's begun. Now... take me to Yui."  
  
"To Yui..."  
  
***  
  
A boy's whisper behind her.  
  
"Asuka..."  
  
The First Child turns around and recognizes the haunted,  
tear-stricken eyes of the Third.  
  
"Shinji...?" she whispers, with a tremble in her voice.  
  
He doesn't see her. He goes straight to the comatose  
Second Child's bedside, and plaintively pleads for her.  
  
"Asuka... Asuka..."  
  
***  
  
The barriers across the parallel visions shatter, as the  
desperate shaking in the boy's voice reverberates across  
the dream like a tremor in the earth.  
  
And is gone.  
  
"I'm sorry," she whimpers, finally, alone, in the  
darkness. She kneels in the void, crossing her arms  
against her self in a forlorn, shaking embrace. "I don't  
know what to do. I don't know what I'm here for. I don't  
want this! I don't wish you to suffer, but... Ikari, I'm  
sorry..."  
  
Silently her consciousness slips into the darkness around  
her.  
  
"Wake up!" hisses a young woman's voice, furtive and  
angry.  
  
And Ayanami wakes up with a start, sits up, back in her  
own bed, alone in her crumbling apartment. Heart racing,  
she looks around quietly, and her eyes glance out the  
window, notices the moon at watch in the evening sky,  
bathing the room in its light.  
  
"This is my final night," she realizes, putting her feet  
on the floor. "And I'm the last one."  
  
She starts to go through the motions of changing her  
clothes, preparing to return to Terminal Dogma. She  
notices the Commander's glasses on her dresser, and  
pauses.  
  
Several minutes later the girl closes the door behind  
her, leaving her room forever behind.  
  
The glasses lie crumpled, shattered shards, a dead man's  
tears, on the floor that had not been cleaned for a long  
time.  
  
----  
  
To be continued...  
  



	2. Premonition / The Three Faces of Eve

The First Child / Before I Sleep  
Part 2 - Premonition / The Three Faces of Eve   
-------  
  
The NERV sentry feels the skin on his neck crawl. Taking a firmer grip on   
his rifle, he turns his head slowly behind him, only to see the   
scarlet-eyed schoolgirl, the one who had passed him just seconds ago,  
staring intently at him.  
  
With a strange look of... sadness in her eyes.  
  
Still shaken, the sentry sighs and smiles at the girl. "Is something   
wrong, miss?" he offers.  
  
"You should leave this place... it is dangerous," replies Rei.  
  
"Why, did someone follow you here?" he asks, one hand reaching out for   
his radio.  
  
"No... I don't know. I just... feel it."  
  
"Don't worry, Miss Ayanami, I'm here to protect you. You go on to where   
the Commander wants you," grunts the sentry, suppressing a laugh. "We   
all have our duty to perform," he says awkwardly, turning his back   
to her.  
  
The sentry returns to his position at the gate, adjusts his helmet,   
and looks out, blank-faced, into the night.  
  
After a few seconds, Rei uncertainly resumes her walk, deeper into   
the depths of NERV. Still struggling with the strange sense of foreboding  
gripping into her consciousness.  
  
Later, the sentry would still be pondering the strange encounter with   
the young Eva pilot when the JSSDF commando's knife slices his throat   
from behind.  
  
***  
  
She senses the Fifth Child's presence, again, behind her. Standing   
behind her as the escalator descends.  
  
A crunching sound, a slight slurping, and self-satisfied chewing.  
  
"What are you doing here?" she asks quietly, not turning to look.  
  
"Just eating," he replies, with apparent nonchalance. He offers the   
half-eaten apple to her. "Want some?"  
  
"Thank you," she says. "But I am not hungry."  
  
"You're sure? It's only an apple, you know. It's not the Forbidden Fruit."  
  
The boy holds up the apple in his right hand, and gazes at it, as if   
lost in thought.  
  
"What are you doing here?" she finally asks, a soft diffident whisper.  
  
"I'm trying to make amends, Lillith-child", he says, finally eliciting   
a stare from the girl, who turns her head back to look at him from   
the corner of her eyes, but says nothing.  
  
"Can you imagine a universe consisting of only two dimensions? A   
universe that's only a flat plane, if you will," he continues,   
interrupting himself to grab another bite from the apple. "Imagine what   
a sentient being in that universe would experience, if a three-dimensional  
entity like this apple were to fall on his flat-plane universe? He   
would see just small portions of the apple, the few surfaces touching  
the flat plane of his world. Now imagine the apple rolling along that  
plane; the apple would only be shifting position, but to the sentient  
observer living in that two-dimensional universe, it would seem as if   
the apple was appearing and disappearing, incarnating and reincarnating   
at random at different places. This is because that observer cannot  
imagine anything existing in a third dimension."  
  
"Fifth Child," she replies, turning her back to him once more. "What   
is your point?"  
  
"Just by way of analogy, what if our theoretical, two-dimensional   
sentient being is actually a three-dimensional being herself... but   
it's just that she doesn't know it, or refuses to know it yet?"  
  
He smiles at her behind her back.  
  
She steps off the escalator as it reaches a concrete landing.  
  
"Fifth Child, I do not..." she starts to reply, turning back to look  
at him. And stops when she realizes he's disappeared. Again.  
  
"I do not understand," she finishes, her voice trailing off.  
  
"I do understand we are one, you and I," she hears her own voice saying   
to her, behind her.  
  
She turns to look down at the now ascending escalator. Where the figure   
of a blank-faced girl approaches her, and steps off at the concrete  
landing to face her.  
  
It's like looking at a mirror, she thinks.  
  
"Are you one of my clones?" she asks the newcomer.  
  
The other Rei doesn't answer.  
  
"Answer me," she pleads.  
  
"Why do you suddenly need answers?"  
  
"Because my mission is nearing completion."  
  
"Your life and your mission are not the same. They don't have to be. This  
is your reason... this is your answer."  
  
"Then you are what I will be because of this mission."  
  
"You are looking at Forbidden Fruit, First Child. Be careful."  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"It is your choice to see me, even though I am you. Remember this,   
that you are responsible for what you see. Such knowledge breeds danger,  
if not treated with care."  
  
"Rei Ayanami."  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Show me."  
  
A pregnant pause.  
  
"You can't see everything. And what you would see won't necessarily   
be real."  
  
"Then tell me what you do see..."  
  
The Other turns away from her, but answers, "All right..."  
  
As she opens her lips to speak, the blackness of the Void envelops them.  
  
***  
  
She finds herself back in the vast plain where Yui Ikari's gravepost   
once lay, the scene of the last civil discourse between Gendo and Shinji  
Ikari. As Rei walks slowly among the undulating rows of graveposts,   
she spots a solitary figure standing silently in front of one gravepost.   
She recognizes the Commander's black uniform, but the wearer is different  
today. Shorter, more delicate. Stronger and more vulnerable. A woman   
with auburn hair.  
  
Yui Ikari.  
  
The woman turns to face Rei as she approaches.  
  
"You're finally back," whispers Yui, in a voice at once ancient and young.  
  
"They desire your presence... both of them do... I am here to summon   
you back..."  
  
Yui looks at her in silence, unmoving. It takes Rei a moment to note   
the tear rolling down the older woman's cheek.  
  
"Mother..."  
  
And the Void envelops them both.  
  
***  
  
Terminal Dogma. In the Chamber of the Guf.  
  
In the darkness, the last incarnation of the child Rei Ayanami   
stands silently staring at the tank containing the remains of her clones.  
  
Gendo Ikari, in a brief moment of doubt as he walks into the lab,   
wonders if the child has been trying to talk with the dead. But his  
anticipation overcomes him.  
  
"Rei... I thought you'd be here."  
  
The girl turns to face him.  
  
"The promised time has come," continues Ikari. "Let's go."  
  
(to be continue...)  
  
  
****  
Author's Notes:  
"Moon over Damascus" is an allusion to the Biblical revelation of Saint Paul on the road to Damascus.  
"Three Faces of Eve" is an allusion to the book and film "The Three Faces of Eve." This is not  
meant to portray Rei as a Multiple Personality Disorder patient, but rather to expand on and highlight  
the First Child's nature as a vessel for Lillith's and Yui's selves, as well as Rei's own emerging   
sense of self. This fic will try to explore the dynamics among these three selves, as the  
fates and motivations of Yui's Gendo, Lillith's Adam, and Rei's Shinji and Asuka intersect at   
Third Impact.   



	3. Doll's House / Original Sin

The First Child/Before I Sleep  
Part 3   
  
-----------  
  
Rei's voice echoes through the void.  
  
"No."  
  
...  
  
"The promised time has come, yes, but what is the promise?"  
  
...  
  
"I'd prayed for this day, but now I fear it."  
  
...  
  
"You can't let me cease to be, because once upon a time, my existence mattered to someone."  
  
...  
  
"Don't you remember? Can't you hear him?"  
  
...  
  
"No... I am not your doll, Ikari."  
  
...  
  
A door closes on an empty room. Footsteps recede into the distance.  
  
Leaving behind the shattered remains of glasses that once signified something that lived on only  
in a dying girl's memory.  
  
Time passes within the abandoned room.  
  
A room devoid of life. Perhaps a few seconds pass, perhaps a few millenia. No sentience  
within the room exists to know the difference.  
  
The broken shards of glass, bathed in the moonlight streaming through the window,  
lies there as if caught in a moment, frozen for posterity as if in a glass museum case.   
  
But eventually a shadow shifts in the background, like an insubstantial ghost.  
A boy in black slacks and white shirt emerges, kneels down on the floor in front of the  
glass shards. He lies still, as if staring through the floor. Eventually he moves, still  
kneeling, to take a hand broom and a dustpan from a corner of the room, and proceeds to sweep   
away the glass shards. Slowly, as his hands tremble, he tries to clean.  
  
As he does so a chill wind blows in through the open window, carrying along with it  
the faint sound of distant voices. Scuffling. The stamping of distant boots on an  
unseen floor.   
  
"We've found the Third Child. Will proceed to terminate."  
  
Metallic clicks.  
  
"I'm sorry, kid, this is nothing personal." A stranger's cold, gruff voice.  
  
Gunfire. Running footsteps. Grunts, the thud of bodies falling.  
  
"Nothing personal here either," whispers a woman's soft, seething voice.  
  
Another gunshot... just one.  
  
Behind the boy, in the pale moonlight, another shadow becomes visible, a tall,  
red-clad figure with her back turned to the boy.  
  
As she turns to face him, the frail light fades, the room turns completely dark.  
  
"Why, Misato? Why did he have to die...?"  
  
And the room, and everything in it, disappears.  
  
---  
The Void. A silent, black vacuum.  
  
Faint breathing from somewhere within the shadows. A faint, breaking whisper.  
"Why...? Why him...?"  
  
Silence.  
  
"He was more deserving of life than I was..."  
  
Silence.  
  
"Asuka... help me, Asuka..."  
  
The void is suddenly pierced by a hint of faint, brittle light, barely illuminating   
a solitary metal folding chair.  
  
The spotlight slowly widens. Illuminating classroom desks and chairs. Silent rows of   
uniform desks and chairs, facing the lone metal chair.  
  
Behind the lone metal chair, a schoolteacher's monolithic desk. Behind which sits  
a solitary shadow.  
  
The old sensei quietly reading faded, yellowing lesson notes behind his desk.  
Oblivious to the Void.  
  
He would have stayed like this for eternity, for all he knew. Except for the arrival  
of a gaunt ghost, a young yet grey-haired student, who sits now on the lone metal   
folding chair. His hands clasped together, elbows on his knees, scarlet eyes staring   
intently forward, into empty space. As if waiting.  
  
Kaworu Nagisa.   
  
A pinprick of light appears in his hand.  
  
The boy raises his right hand to bring the Marloboro, like a stubby  
smoking wand, to his lips. The boy puffs uncertainly on  
the cigarette. As he exhales smoke, he relaxes dramatically, and sits back, slowly crossing  
his legs, his left ankle resting now over his right knee.  
  
The old sensei looks up from his papers to narrow his eyes in stern disapproval.  
  
"Those things will kill you, young man," he grunts at the boy's back.  
  
"...Does it matter, really? I'm already dead," deadpans the boy, in a soft, almost  
submissive voice.  
  
The old sensei raises an eyebrow, and sits back, crossing his arms.  
  
"Another young punk, trying to sound profound," grumbles the sensei. "I've met  
many of you before, you're nothing new to me."  
  
"Smoking is new to me, really; I only tried it not too long ago," relies Kaworu. "It tastes   
good, actually. When you get used to the smell, you can't go without it."  
  
"I know," replies the old sensei, frowning severly. "It took me forever to quit   
that blasted addiction."  
  
They both pause, staring out into space.  
  
"Do you have a spare with you? And a light?" he says suddenly.  
  
"Sure, sensei. Here," he replies. He reaches into his pocket for his pack and a  
lighter, and tosses both to the teacher, who catches them easily with both hands.  
The boy listens to the old man, who with practiced hands gets a stick from the  
pack, puts the cigarette to his lips, and with a flick of the lighter closes his  
eyes, savoring the smoke.  
  
"I thought you had quit," remarks the boy.  
  
"Well. I'm dead anyway," deadpans the old man.  
  
"Not yet... we're not there yet."  
  
"You know exactly what I mean, Tabris."  
  
"You... lost your wife and children at Second Impact."  
  
"I'm glad you remember."  
  
"I see... I'm sorry."  
  
"Of course you are."  
  
"You... don't sound convinced, sensei."  
  
"I'm an old man, boy. Old men like us, we've seen too many things."  
  
"Yes, I see... you have a lot of 'past' to remember. The Third told me how  
you always dwelt on the past... like the future doesn't exist."  
  
"As if children such as these can make the future any better than what the  
past was," wheezes the old sensei, bitterness creeping into his voice.  
  
"Lying to him, and to all his friends, about Second Impact didn't help. SEELE  
lying to me about Lillith didn't help. The truth--"  
  
"Truth, and history, like everything the human mind created, boy, is relative. The truth  
about Second Impact had to be 'changed' to meet society's needs..."  
  
"Needs," interjects the boy, sadly, "as determined by a select few who  
found power in their laps. By SEELE. By kings and presidents, clerics and cardinals,   
monks and mullahs, rabbis and generals and bankers... and old men like Kihl."  
  
The sensei responds with silence, focusing his attention instead on the smoke  
wafting through the air around him. Until he coughs.  
  
"This is really a bad habit you've learned," exclaims the old man, who  
still holds on to his cigarette.  
  
"Well... I picked this up from Kaji-san. It looks... what's the word...  
'cool.' I should tell Shinji, maybe the Second Child, Asuka, likes men who smoke. It's...  
cool. Don't you think so?"  
  
"It's not. You shouldn't copy everything that your elders do."  
  
"Do as I say and not as you do, sensei?"  
  
"Yes. Of course. Of course. You know I'm right about this."  
  
The grey-haired boy closes his eyes, for a moment. A shadow of a smile crosses  
his lips.  
  
"Yes, sensei."  
  
The old teacher suddenly seems distracted by a figure to his right. An auburn-haired  
female student sitting alone, lost in thought, by the window.   
  
"You there," the old teacher spits out, "have you been listening at all in class?"  
  
And a young Yui Ikari shifts her gaze to the teacher, flushes slightly, nodding.  
"Yes, sensei."  
  
"Well then, young lady," the old man warns her, "what have I been discussing the  
past ten minutes?"  
  
"The Kabbalah, sensei," she answers. "The Lurianic Kabbalah."  
  
"Well, what about it?"  
  
"It was a... myth tradition that explained existence in terms of exile," says  
the girl, almost uncertainly.  
  
"Yes, yes, that was the interpretation I gave. What was the myth itself?"  
  
"Uhm... that the Godhead, the Ein Sof, had to withdraw from a region within itself  
in order to make room for the world, for Creation."  
  
"Yes? And?"  
  
"And... that the... Ein Sof had tried to channel divine light back into what he had  
created, but the channel broke and trapped some of the divine sparks. When Adam  
sinned, the divine sparks were trapped in the material world. They... they..."  
  
"They became the Shekhinah, the presence that is the closest that a mortal can  
apprehend of the divine. The Lurianic Kabbalists pictured her as a woman wandering  
the earth, a perpetual exile, yearning to be reunited with the Godhead. So, Ms.  
Ikari, what purpose did the myth serve for the ancients in the Palestinian desert?"  
  
"It, uhm, accounts for a divinity who doesn't seem to be in full control of his  
creation, and has to bear the existence of evil. The exile of the people, and the  
exile of the Shekhinah, mirrored the same reality."  
  
"So even a God is in exile from itself. It's pretty depressing, isn't it?"  
  
"But they believed in the distant promise of a reunification with the Godhead."  
"And what do you think of this myth's worldview, Ms. Ikari?"  
  
"It's obsolete... I think human civilization has advanced to the point that we can  
manage our own destiny..." the girl smiles, "and if this Shekhina exists,  
we can even go ahead and help her come home. Religion and myth, after all, are as  
much a human invention as science is."  
  
The old sensei's eyes look lost in thought. He sighs, and turns back to Kaworu,  
and whispers.  
  
"Yes, I do remember the Third's mother. Even as a young girl, she was so full of  
confidence. She was a scientific genius, you know, although a bit inattentive  
in my class... or maybe not."  
  
The light in the room shifts, the boy and the old sensei disappear, and only  
the girl is left in the room.  
  
The interrogation finished, the girl resumes her trance, and looks out the  
window.  
  
She looks out, the morning daylight fades into afternoon, as her face ages, loses its   
adolescent looks, and becomes that of a young woman.  
  
A red-haired woman around her age, sitting to her right, leans in and whispers to her.  
"You're still thinking about him, haven't you?"  
  
"What are you talking about?"  
  
"The Rokobungi boy, silly. Really, don't worry about him. Professor Fuyutsuki  
will bail his sorry ass out of jail."  
  
"I know," she sighs.  
  
"But really, Yui, I can't understand your attraction to noisy, know-it-all troublemakers.   
Heaven forbid your kids someday inherit your taste."  
  
"But that's why we're friends, dear."  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"You're not so quiet yourself, Kyoko," she replies, smiling. "Your Western assertiveness  
scares away all the boys, even the confident ones like Gendo. But I like you just the   
way you are."  
  
"Whatever," the redhead replies, arms crossed across her chest as she leans back. "But  
how about that Fuyutsuki? He seems to, well, really like you, I think."  
  
"Don't be silly! He's like a father to me," she retorts, and resumes staring out the  
window.  
  
"I'm glad you're starting to remember," answers a boy's voice from where Kyoko had been  
seated.  
  
Startled, Yui looks back to her seatmate, and finds herself staring instead at a scarlet-eyed,  
gray-haired youth.  
  
And Kaworu, in turn, now finds himself staring at a scarlet-eyed, blue-haired schoolgirl.  
"Yes..." replies Rei, "they're her memories, but I do remember them..."  
  
--- 


End file.
